Mount Pleasant Methodist Church – Brant County

A century and a half of faith in a country village church will be celebrated in style on Oct. 20 at Mount Pleasant United Church.

Weather permitting, a wagon drawn by two Belgian horses will pick up guests, including ministers and choir directors, and deliver them to the church for the 2 p.m. service. Parishioners and visitors are encouraged to join in the spirit by attending in period costume or at least by sporting Sunday hats, said church member Mary Aslin.

An antique tractor and plow will be on display in front of the 1863 church, courtesy of the Burford Tractor Club, to reflect the congregation’s rural roots, and refreshments will include hot apple cider and anniversary cake made from an 1860 recipe featuring currants, fruits and spices.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Aslin said.

The present building was dedicated as a Methodist church on Sept. 23, 1863, having been designed by prominent Brantford architect John Turner and built at a cost of $4,150.

However, the congregation’s roots reach back to the village’s early settlement and the original Bethesda Chapel, built in the early 1830s. That chapel, also called the “old Union Church,” predated by almost a century the formation of the current United Church in 1925, but it stood for a similar “united” community in that it was used by Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Anglicans. Mormon followers are said to also have used the chapel after Mormon founder Joseph Smith visited Mount Pleasant in 1833.

In 1963, the present building, by then Mount Pleasant United, celebrated its centennial and the dedication of an adjoining church hall.

Current members recall the days when the church was packed with people every week and the Sunday School brimmed over with youngsters.

The church currently supports the Brantford food bank with weekly donations, boasts a prayer group and coffee club, and shares the hosting of an ecumenical men’s group with All Saints Anglican. Average Sunday attendance numbers about 30 parishioners.

“We’re a warm and friendly congregation, and probably not as formal as some churches,” said Rev. Stephen Shantz, who, since 2010, has been ministering the church for a second go-round. His first stint as pastor was from 1968 to 1972.

Mount Pleasant United Church has offered a “meaningful Christian presence,” Shantz said. Being a “bedrock” of the community, it served those in need during many generations before social agencies largely took over that role, he said.

— Workmen building the church in 1863 often sent local youngster George Cox to the village store for supplies and “water.” More often than not he returned with a tin pail full of whisky, available for 25 cents a gallon. The temperance minister was not amused, likely even less so when he was told that a workman had encased a bottle of whisky in one of the three-foot-thick walls.

photo credit: BRIAN THOMPSON Brantford Expositor

— A circuit roll from 1864 bears the name of Emily Stowe – Canada’s first female physician. Stowe (nee Jennings) was born in Norwich Township, married John Stowe of Mount Pleasant and served as the first female principal of Brantford’s Central School before embarking on a medical career – getting her degree in the U.S. — and becoming the first woman doctor to practise in Canada.

— Magnificent stained glass windows adorn the church, installed over the years in memory of former parishioners.

— The church’s pipe organ was sold in 1976 and found a new home in a New Durham church. It was destroyed three years later when the tornado of 1979 tore through that church. A paddle from the organ is mounted on the wall at Mount Pleasant United as a memento.

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Brantford History
After General Haldimand, Governor of the Province of Quebec, awarded the Grand River grant to the Six Nations Confederacy, Iroquois people built a village at a site at the Grand River near where the Royal Chapel of the Mohawks is now located. The government, in fact, built the chapel for the Six Nations in 1785 to replace the Royal Chapel at Fort Hunter in the Mohawk Valley, which had been lost as a result of the Revolutionary War. To build the chapel, Joseph Brant called upon two old friends from the Mohawk Valley, John Smith and John Thomas. For their help, he gave them land nearby. Smith’s grant was in today’s North Ward of Brantford and Thomas’ grant was in Cainsville.

It was Brant’s goal that Smith and Thomas would also give the Iroquois the benefit of their farming knowledge. Before the Revolutionary War, Iroquois men had led a life of hunting and fighting. Brant realized that this lifestyle would have to be replaced with one of farming. But he knew that this would be difficult for Iroquois men to do because it had been done previously by the women. Someone would be needed to show the men how to farm. Brant encouraged other friends to settle on the Grand River by giving them grants. People like the Nelles and Young families from the Mohawk Valley moved to the Grand River. But settlement near the Six Nations’ village did not occur until later.

The person considered the first white settler in Brantford was John Stalts, who in 1805 built a log cabin where the War memorial is now located, at the west end of Dalhousie (pronounced daLOOZie) Street. This was on the farm of Mohawk chief John Hill. However, Stalts was not overrun with neighbours because by 1818 the population had swelled to twelve people. There was a thriving village nearby at Mount Pleasant but not here. It wasn’t until the Hamilton and London Road was completed in 1823 that things began to pick up. Early settlers included William Sutton, the Wilkes family consisting of John and his two sons, John and James, Nathen Gage, Reuben Leonard, and Arunah Huntington. Dutton bought the western half of Chief Hill’s farm and John Wilkes Sr. bought the eastern half.

John Aston Wilkes was a merchant from Birmingham in England. He started his business in York (Toronto) in 1820 and in 1822 sent his sons John and James to Brantford to open up a branch store to trade with the Iroquois. The branch was so successful that it became the tree; John Sr. sold up in York and moved to Brantford. At that time the population of Brantford was less than 100 white people.

One of the sideshoots of Wilkes’ business was a distillery, which he built in 1830 on his land, which extended from the Market Place to Waterworks Creek, near Clarence Street, and included Colborne, Dalhousie, and Darling Streets. The next year, William Kerby built a competing distillery on the bank of the river near Church Street. The booze business must have been good because, in 1832, William Spencer built a brewery on the west side of the river near St Mary’s Lane.

Marshal Lewis, from New York State, built the first bridge over the Grand River near his mill, which was near the present Mill Street. Lewis was one of two men who tried to name the town after themselves. By 1826 or 1827, the town had grown big enough for a formal name. At a gathering of about two hundred people, Lewis suggested that the town be named Lewisville. Robert Biggar, who lived at Mount Pleasant but owned a tract of land just west of West Street, put forward the name Biggar’s Town. John Wilkes Sr. wanted it named Birmingham after his home town in England. Thankfully, someone mentioned that, as it was near where Brant had established a ford over the river, perhaps the town should be named Brant’s Ford. This was unanimously accepted. The exact location of Brant’s Ford is in dispute but it is close to the Lorne Bridge, which replaced an earlier bridge built by Robert Biggar in 1827.

The downtown area looks very different from 150 years ago. Then a small stream called the Cove made an island of the land where the casino and Earl Haig Park are now. The Cove has been filled in and is now under Icomm Drive. Two streets north of the Cove are still called Water Street and Wharfe Street, recognizing their role when Brantford was a port.

The Grand River Navigation Company cut a canal from the Grand River near Cainsville to Brantford, where it followed the line of Greenwich Street. From the completion of the canal in 1849 to the company’s bankruptcy in 1861, Brantford could be reached by river and canal from Lake Erie and, through the Welland Canal, Lake Ontario. The western end of the canal has been filled in to form Shallow Creek Park but the rest of the canal can still be seen. The remains of one of the locks can be seen where Locks Road crosses the canal at Beach Road.…from “One-day trips through the history of Southwest Ontario” http://www.herontrips.com/

Reflection

Beautiful is the large church,
With stately arch and steeple;
Neighbourly is the small church,
With groups of friendly people;
Reverent is the old church,
With centuries of grace;
And a wooden church or a stone church,
Can hold an alter place.
And whether it be a rich church
Or a poor church anywhere,
Truly it is a great church
If God is worshiped there.
...author unknown
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"Thus has passed away the old order of things, and in the great march of progress all seems to have changed. In the short period of sixty years the old woods have nearly all been cleared away. The corduroy roads and the stumps are no longer seen. The oxen and the sled are gone. The log barns are rotted away or burned up. The old cradle and the hand rake are seldom used now. The old log schoolhouse on the corner is long a thing of the past. The old church, too, has been changed. Its environment has also changed. In the grassy plot around where it stood are numerous mounds over which the weeds solemnly wave. These were not there sixty years ago. The old shanty with its hallowed associations has passed away. The old clay fireplace, the chain and the hook that hung from the lug-pole, the old bake-kettle that sat on the hearth, the old benches that stood by the walls, all are gone. The old familiar faces that sat around the great old fireplace sixty years ago and told the old stories of their early homes far away, they too are nearly all gone and sleeping - sleeping in the years of the long ago."
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Though everything else has changed the Church remains the same a silent reminder that we need God as much today as our forefathers did a century ago. It stands as a visible link with the past reminding us of the faith, courage and perseverance of the men and women who first settled here.
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’About Music - Tis pleasing to my pensive mind - To recollect the hours - When socially we all combin’d - To exert our vocal powers - Oft we beguil’d the winter eve - Forgot the chilling storm - The charms of music to receive -The sacred notes perform.
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She was so simply beautiful
The village pastor’s child,
It seemed, where’r she turned her face,
Eternal summer smiled.
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"Listening to the song and story of my dusky friends my heart is bounding with delight. . . . Like innocent children they asked me whether or not I had seen any buffalo. . . . The shadows are falling over their pathway. . . . And they bow to the inevitable lot imposed upon them by the white race . . . [they] await the time when the Great Spirit shall call [them] away."